Free Republic

Bomb scare halts Amtrak, closes Richmond BART RICHMOND - Police said a suspicious package on an Amtrak train has turned out to be computer parts. Authorities had shut down the Richmond BART/Amtrak station and all Northern California north-south Amtrak rail traffic because of a chanting man aboard a train and some suspicious packages in the car. One of three packages appeared to have electronic equipment consistent with bomb-making materials, but a robot was sent to investigate further and found the package contained computer parts. There was no immediate word on how soon Amtrak would re-open. Meanwhile, the man whose chanting...

TRENTON, N.J. — The wife of a New Jersey man whose body was hacked up, put in three suitcases and dumped in the ocean last year was arrested Thursday morning in the death. Melanie McGuire, 32, of Brick, will be charged Thursday afternoon with first-degree murder in the death of her husband, William T. McGuire, said John R. Hagerty, spokesman for the state Division of Criminal Justice. McGuire was killed April 29, 2004, Hagerty said. His dismembered body was found in his own matching luggage in the Chesapeake Bay near Norfolk, Va. Hagerty said authorities believe Melanie McGuire shot her...

In a civilized and progressive country, buying sex from a prostitute would be no different than buying meat from a butcher. Indeed, most Western countries have reasonable laws regarding prostitution, in the U.S. we are faced with Christian fundamentalists imposing their values on the rest of us. If they can't browbeat us into joining their moral crusade, then they will enact laws to prevent us from doing what they secretly wish they could. Buy sex from a hooker in liberal Oakland, Ca and you many lose your vehicle and see your mug shot plastered on a billboard or bus shelter....

Santa Rosa Man Named as "Deep Throat" Posted: May 31, 2005 at 9:30 a.m. SANTA ROSA (KRON) -- A Santa Rosa man is claiming to be the source called "Deep Throat" who provided information to the Washington Post about the Watergate Scandal more than 30 years ago. "Vanity Fair" magazine reports W. Mark Felt told his children several years ago that he provided the information to Post reporters Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward. At the time, Felt was the second highest official at the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Woodward isn't commenting on the reports. The two investigative reporters have long...

I thought it would be fun to have a place for us to share pictures of what we did on our Memorial Day Weekend... Please feel free to share... Stearman - under the ribbon DC3 - ain't she a beauty!> Bearcat ME-109 - the only one flying, I believeP-40

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. health regulators on Friday said they have received more than 40 reports of a type of blindness in men taking impotence drugs, mostly involving Pfizer Inc.'s Viagra. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration said it has received about 38 reports of the rare condition among users of Viagra, four reports of blindness among users of Eli Lilly and Co.'s Cialis and one report of the condition in men talking Levitra, made by GlaxoSmithKline Plc. Pfizer said outside of clinical trials, Viagra has been used by more than 23 million men worldwide over the past seven years....

ZURICH (Reuters) - A giant dominatrix teddy bear wearing a leather mask and brandishing hand-cuffs has been banned from sober Zurich's street display of man-sized model bears, the project's artistic director said Tuesday. While tourists pose for snaps next to a brightly-painted and benign array of models such as the "schoolteacher bear" and the "skier bear," "Baervers" -- a pun on the German for perverse -- has been deemed too steamy for the financial capital's streets. "This bear is perverse, dominatrix and hardcore. We had to ban it because of the children," Beat Seeberger-Quin, the project's art director, told Reuters....

The Pennsylvania man who flew his Cessna into Washington's restricted airspace on May 11 called the experience "very scary" in his first interview today but said he tried to follow proper procedures and would appeal the revocation of his pilot's license. He realized he was off course over Baltimore and he tried unsuccessfully to communicate with authorities as soon as he spotted a Black Hawk helicopter that was trying to warn him. When he was finally confronted by U.S. fighter jets, he said "I thought we were going to get shot out of the sky." It was Sheaffer's flight that...

Let's take a look at the Sexiest Men of County Music -- or as we like to call them Hunks! 1. Tim McGraw........OOOLAALAA!!! 2. Toby Keith......hubba hubba 3. Kenny Chesney 4. Alan Jackson 5. Keith Urban.... Grrrr.... 6. Jimmy Buffett 7. George Strait 8. Clint Black 9. Trace Adkins 10. Kenny Rogers 11. Troy Gentry of Montgomery Gentry 12. Joe Nichols 13. Gary Allan 14. Brad Paisley 15. Blake Shelton 16. Josh Gracin 17. Daryl Worley 18. The lead singer in Rascal Flatts - Gary Levox, I believe. 19. Randy Travis 20. Kris Kristofferson I would also like to nominate...

Businews Columnist Roger Button went looking for some different ideas to honor the women in our lives. Here's some of what he found. We have come a long way since 1858, when Mothers Day began in this country in West Virginia. Church worker Anna Reeves Jarvis introduced Mother's Work Day to encourage better sanitation in her town. Twelve years later a Mothers Day Peace proclamation was introduced and two years later modified to Mother's Day of Peace. Jarvis's daughter dedicated her life to honoring mothers. In 1908 she introduced the use of the carnation, a tradition still honored today, with...

Arrests, riot mar Richmond celebration RICHMOND - Cinco de Mayo celebrations got out of hand Thursday as more than 160 police from several local agencies were called in to disperse a crowd of up to 700 people after a riot erupted shortly after 8 p.m. At least one person was arrested during what police described as an "unlawful assembly," and there were reports of vandalism and broken windows at some businesses. A Richmond police officer was struck in the head with a bottle, according to Richmond police Sgt. Mark Gagan. Officer Robert Mulder sustained minor injuries and was treated and...

The story that Sgt. Erik Saar, a soldier who spent three months in the interrogation rooms at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, tells Correspondent Scott Pelley paints a picture of bizarre, even sadistic, treatment of detainees in the American prison camp. Experts in intelligence tell 60 Minutes that if what Saar says is true, some soldiers at Guantanamo have undermined the war on terror, bungling the interrogation of important prisoners. 60 Minutes also reveals previously secret emails from FBI agents at Guantanamo that warn FBI headquarters that prisoners are being tortured. "I think the harm we are doing there far outweighs the...

Unbelievable... Apr 26, 10:00 AM (ET) SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - The University of California, Berkeley has suspended a fraternity whose members hazed a pledge by repeatedly firing a BB gun at him, the school said on Monday. The prospective member of Pi Kappa Phi had been shot on April 8 at least 30 times and was later treated at a local hospital for welts and bruises. School officials placed the fraternity on a so-called "interim" suspension, which bars members from any fraternity activities and strictly limits their use of their chapter house to residential purposes, such as eating and sleeping....

The ways we deal with language UNION-TRIBUNE April 17, 2005 Take a look at how individual states handle the combustible language issue – including the English-only movement – and pretty soon you end up with the good, the bad, and the ugly. The good: In Illinois, a state-funded, multiyear effort to help legal permanent residents learn English directs them toward English-as-a-second-language courses. The purpose of the New Americans Initiative is to help foreigners become U.S. citizens by, among other things, helping them fulfill the requirement to speak English as a condition of citizenship. The bad: In Arizona, the Legislature is...

Tommy and Leona are having sex on a tree stump in the middle of a Norwegian clear-cut. Leona, with a mop of brown dreads and a lip ring, looks dreamily across the demolished forest as Tommy, a little shaggy in nothing but a knit hat, works his magic. A few minutes earlier, Leona and Tommy stood at the same spot lecturing about the evils of industrial forestry. But now they're moaning in feral ecstasy, overcoming the powerful negativity of the place -- the broken branches and dried-out logs -- with the juices of the life force itself. Welcome to F--forforest.com...

Apr 8, 5:45 PM (ET) By MARTIN CRUTSINGER WASHINGTON (AP) - The Secret Service, which has the job of guarding the president and other dignitaries, now has a new temporary duty - protecting a mother duck and her nine eggs. The duck, a brown mallard with white markings, has had several names suggested by Treasury Department people, including "Quacks Reform,""T-Bill," and "Duck Cheney." It has built a nest in a mulch pile right at the main entrance to the Treasury Department on Pennsylvania Avenue. The Secret Service's uniformed division, which provides protection for the White House and Treasury building, has...

Calif. Marriage Fight Could Go to Voters SAN FRANCISCO - Five years ago, California voters passed a law that tried to preserve marriage as the exclusive province of heterosexual couples. But following a judge's decision to strike down the statute, the debate has shifted to how a vote would go this time if a constitutional amendment banning same-sex nuptials makes it to the ballot. One pollster believes it will be a close call. And though lawyers are gearing up for court battles — probably winding up before the California Supreme Court — activists on both sides of the debate claim...

By Wayman Dunlap Editor The next time someone tries to tell you that American military forces are nothing but death-dealing, mindless killers, tell them to talk to Salam Shalaam, who flew MiG-23s with the Iraqi Air force during the 1991 Gulf War. He was ordered to fly his aircraft to Iran, where it would be safe from the U.S. Air Force's far-reaching hand. He never made it. En route, he was intercepted by two USAF F-16 Fighting Falcons. The experienced pilot tried in vain to lose the two jets. Moving and maneuvering as best he could, he thought he lost...

Kelly Namowicz has a plan for the rest of her life. "I want to go the California Culinary Academy in San Francisco," she says. "I want to be a professional chef." But until now, there were 14 things standing in her way: tattoos that once almost covered her hands and arms, forcing her to wear long sleeves to job interviews to avoid being stigmatized. "People judge you," Namowicz says. "People don't want to admit it, but it happens." Now, the tattoos are almost gone, thanks to a city program called Clean Slate. It pays for laser treatments that erase the...

AZUSA, Calif. — For the past 60 years, gun enthusiasts have been firing rounds at the San Gabriel Valley Gun Club (search), the largest shooting range in Southern California. But now the club is in the crosshairs, since residents of the city of Azusa say it no longer fits in with the area’s increasingly suburban way of life. Some are lobbying the City Council to adopt a new general zoning plan that would force out the gun club when its lease expires next year. That move has the shooting range firing back, saying it’s been a good neighbor by providing...